Thursday, December 3, 2009

Grad school- a look back part 1: the Room

In an effort to accurately market myself as an artist, and in the meantime while I work on my new website overhaul, I thought I would start to post images of the installations I built during grad school. This is all towards the bigger goal of being a full time artist next year... so here goes.

First Installation "The Room"- was a reaction to change, to family lose, etc. Originally I had been working with layering and collaging wallpaper on a small 6x8 inch scale (see image above). But soon I felt the need to go bigger and to actually create a large wall to gather these sections from in order to acquire more authentic remnants, etc. But soon the wall called for a room.

First I walled off about 9 by 3 ft of the end of my studio with Drywall and a $5 door I bought from the return dept at Lowes. I aged the door myself and the door knob was donated.

(I apologize for poor camera and photo quality, this installation was difficult to capture. but click on some of the clearer images to see them more in detail.)

This is what you see once the door is open. There were two palletts placed on the floor to mimic floorboards. And behind the palletts and the wallpaper were strung lights. The wallpaper was made in long big sheets attached to the wall, then removed and hung about 4 inches away from the wall to allow the lights installment behind them. There was a very musty, dusty smell... It was interesting to see how people approached this space with their own associations. Ultimately as the creator, I had to just let these associations happen and seek solace in my own associations. Because after all, looking back, I built this for myself in many ways.

The whole lighting system was hooked up to this awesome home made timer my uncle built for me in exchange for a few pies! So the whole system was on a rotation. When the lights came on behind the walls and beneath the floors a mixed audio track from home movies and music played as you were surrounded by this glow coming from behind the walls. The holes in the history of the wallpaper were often celestial little pin pricks mixed with larger areas of thin paper resulting in a pinky glow. (I took video of this process which I will edit and include on my new website.)

After 30 secs the timer would rotate turing off the audio and hidden lights and replacing it with the single filament light bulb. Allowing the viewer to look around, read some text scribbled on the wall and take in the many many layers of wall paper, paint and plaster. And then the timer would flip and out would go the light and on would come the audio and hidden light.

Here is the timer in the corner of the installation.

There is much to say about this, hence my grad thesis, but this will do for now...

I saved a few big sections form this project, and plan to hang them in my house one day.

I will be adding other posts of two or three more installations I made during 2006-2008, so check back often.

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I'm an artist, I make stuff and plant stuff in the ground. I grew up hearing "oh well you could make that!" from my mother in response to almost anything. This blog is a recording of both my creative adventures and my goal to live a "greener" lifestyle.